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Reddit has become one of the internet’s favorite places to share opinions. You can find just about any community there, no matter how niche. But there is a new problem in the platform, and it’s the brands and marketers. Brands and agencies are now planting promotional posts and comments on Reddit in the hope that tools such as ChatGPT and Gemini will later surface them as genuine recommendations. The practice is part of generative engine optimization, or GEO, an emerging marketing strategy focused on influencing chatbot answers rather than conventional Google results.
Now, Reddit is fighting back with an AI of its own, just like some other platforms.
Reddit’s AI is hunting artificial hype
Reddit states that its upgraded automated systems examine suspicious signals from the moment an account is created. Large language models then look for subtle patterns of coordinated activity, fake engagement, and manufactured hype that older spam filters could miss. The company says these systems now block 23 million spam views each day, catch roughly 25,000 new spammy posts and comments daily, and revoke nearly 2 million inauthentic votes per day.
Reddit also reports that user exposure to spam fell around 20% between January and March 2026 compared with the preceding three months. It attributes the growing volume of detected content to better enforcement tools rather than proof that spam itself has suddenly exploded. Bots, paid promotions and fake reviews that push product recommendations aren’t something new on Reddit. But AI chatbots have simply raised the reward for getting them onto the platform.
Your ChatGPT recommendation could be an ad in disguise
Marketing companies have already succeeded in getting newly created Reddit posts cited by ChatGPT, sometimes within a day. Some of those posts were later removed. But these agencies are continuing to look for ways around Reddit’s moderation. These companies are manufacturing conversations on Reddit and waiting for chatbots to discover them as real opinions.
Reddit still relies on site administrators, volunteer moderators, and user voting alongside automated enforcement. Community moderators were responsible for more than half of the post and comment removals during the second half of 2025.
